Elodie Harper | |
|---|---|
| Born | Elodie Lauren Geraldine Harper July 1980 |
| Alma mater | Corpus Christi College, Oxford |
| Spouse | Jason Farrington (m. 2010) |
| Children | 1 |
| Mother | Suzy Kendall |
| Website | www |
Elodie Lauren Geraldine Harper (born 1980) is an English author and journalist. She began her career working for the BBC and Channel 4 News before joining ITV News Anglia as a reporter. Her Pompeii-set novel The Wolf Den (2021), the first in a trilogy, became a #1 Sunday Times bestseller.
Harper is from West London, the daughter of retired actress Suzy Kendall.She graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford with a degree in English literature.
Harper presented a number of documentaries for the BBC, including a July 2006 documentary on Volunteer Ministers in Scientology for BBC Radio 5 Live. [1] [2] She then worked as a producer and reporter for Channel 4 News before joining ITV News Anglia in 2010 as a staff reporter. [3]
Harper successfully submitted her short story "Wild Swimming" to Stephen King's Bazaar of Bad Dreams short story competition. [4] The winning story then featured King's 2016 anthology Six Scary Stories . That March, Harper signed a two-book deal with Mulholland Books for the publication of her debut novel The Binding Song, a thriller set at the fictional HMP Halvergate in Norfolk, in 2017. [5] This was followed by her second crime novel The Death Knock in 2018. However, she felt her first two novels, set in the "Norfolk Noir" genre, [6] were too close to her day job, motivating her to go into historical fiction. [7]
Historian Dan Jones introduced Harper to Head of Zeus (a Bloomsbury Books imprint), [8] through which Harper published her first historical fiction novel The Wolf Den in May 2021. Set in ancient Pompeii, the novel follows Amara, a young woman enslaved in the city's Lupanar. [9] She cited Robert Knapp's Invisible Romans, Mary Beard's Pompeii, and Alison Cooley's Pompeii and Herculaneum as some of her sources when conducting research for the novel. [10] The Wolf's Den debuted at #1 on The Sunday Times paperback fiction list, [11] won the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, [12] and was shortlisted for Page Turner of the Year at the 2022 British Book Awards. [13] It was also longlisted for the Historical Writers' Association's (HWA) Gold Crown Award. [14] This was followed by a sequel The House with the Golden Door in 2022, [15] which entered the top 10 on the bestseller list. [16] The third and final installment The Temple of Fortuna was published in 2023. [17] Antonia Senior of The Times called it "one of the best historical fiction trilogies" since Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall . [18]
In 2022, it was confirmed Harper would reunite with Head of Zeus for her next two novels: Boudicca's Daughter and an untitled novel about Fulvia, Mark Antony's wife. [19] In 2024, Harper signed her first children's book deal with DK Children for a middle-grade trilogy. [20]
Harper married Jason Farrington in 2010. They divorced in 2020. [21] [22]